Phoenix II: Biffle - Friday media visit

Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, is in seventh place in
the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings with just two races remaining.
Biffle has three top-10s in his last four Cup starts at Phoenix; he has
three Nationwide Series...

Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, is in seventh place in
the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings with just two races remaining.
Biffle has three top-10s in his last four Cup starts at Phoenix; he has
three Nationwide Series victories at PIR -- including one earlier this
year. Biffle was fourth fastest in Friday's practice session.

"I love this race track. It's a
lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it. I've got a couple of chances
left in this season to pick up a win, and we're continuing to try and
chip away at the points. We made some pretty decent gains the last couple
of weeks. We're close to a few guys now, so we'll see what we can do
about continuing to move up, and I'm looking forward to racing here on
Sunday."

DO YOU HAVE TO FIGURE OUT THIS TRACK BEFORE THE RACE? OR, CAN
YOU ADJUST ON IT ON SUNDAY? "This race track, that's one thing I like
about it, it's kind of difficult and it's different from one end to the
other, extremely different. And it's kind of got some quirks to it. It
kind of suits my driving style. Yeah, you better be pretty close before
the race starts. The biggest struggle, obviously, one end is completely
different from the other -- you're always too tight down there and
always too loose down in three and four, and it's getting that balance.
When the green flag drops and thing's plowing in the middle down there,
the only thing you can do is free it up and then you're so loose down
there you can't step on the gas. So, you've got to get the set-up right
prior to getting going."

CAN YOU LOOK BACK AT WINNING YOUR FIRST NASCAR
CHAMPIONSHIP, IN THE TRUCK SERIES, AND EXPLAIN WHAT IT MEANT TO WIN ONE
AS YOUR CAREER CONTINUED TO PROGRESS? "It was really, really important.
I remember those days like it was today. It was Texas that I clinched the
title, and the Nationwide Series, I clinched it here in Phoenix. It's
memories that I carry with me. It's a lot of fun. Those championships
are hard to come by, and you have to overcome a lot of obstacles to win
them, and they mean a great deal to people."

IF YOU CLINCHED THE
NATIONWIDE CHAMPIONSHIP HERE, WHAT WAS YOUR ATTITUDE GOING TO HOMESTEAD,
AND HOW DID THAT WEEKEND GO? "It went really good. Hopefully, I'll
experience that some day in the Sprint Cup Series. It's a lot of
pressure off, just go down there and try to win, don't worry about
anything else, and certainly you don't want to wreck your car. It was
real nice going to Homestead with the title."

WITH NO TESTING, WHAT IS
YOUR ORGANIZATION LOOKING TO DO DURING THE OFF-SEASON BEFORE THE 2010
SEASON STARTS? "Partly, what we have been doing is looking around for
race tracks where we can go test, where it's still open to test -- like
New Smyrna, Little Rock, things like that. I know North Wilkesboro is
going to be back in business, to a degree. There's some other places.
What we need to do is iron out these cars. The problem is you got two
hours of practice, and it's really hard to say, 'We don't really care
about this race this weekend, let's just try a whole bunch of different
stuff and see if it works.' You can't really do that, you know, because
we have to compete here on Sunday, so it makes it difficult to try and
leap forward, spending 45 minutes in the garage changing front spindles,
ball joints and the whole thing and go back out on the track and think
whether that's better or not. That's a lot of what we're up against.
Computer modeling, simulation, has come a long way. That helps. But you
still need some track time."

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE DIFFICULTY OF GETTING ON TO PIT
ROAD HERE? "Any time you're in the corner and you put your tire down on
the apron to try and head in that direction, it makes the car
super-loose, it makes it kind of want to spin. So, it's hard to get down
on that flat, and then it seems to be dusty and dirty all the time, to
try to get to pit road. And that's under green-flag conditions, which we
very possibly will have green-flag stops here this weekend. There really
isn't any easy pit road at these race tracks or in this sport -- there
are a few, but there aren't very many, they're usually pretty
challenging. This one is probably in the top 10, maybe top five in
getting down there on to pit road."

A TRUE RACER KNOWS THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN A SPEEDWAY AND A RACE TRACK. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE
TWO? THIS WOULD BE A RACE TRACK. AS A RACER, YOU PROBABY GET PRETTY
EXCITIED ABOUT A PLACE LIKE THIS BECAUSE THE DRIVER HAS A CHANCE TO MAKE
A BIG DIFFERENCE. "Yeah. I guess I'm an uneducated racer because I call
speedways the two restrictor-plate race tracks, they're kind of
speedways in my book. The rest of them are race tracks, if you will --
Texas and here and everywhere else, Michigan and California. But, this is
a great race track. This thing is a lot of fun to race on. It's like
Richmond, it's like all of of those other places that are tough --
Darlington. Like I talked about: completely different corners. Turn one
brakes like a road course almost, and then turn in and back in the gas
really early. Dogleg backstretch, and then a real long, long sweeping
corner over here, a constant radius, then it really kind of tightens up
coming off of it. It's a tough place. There's no other way about it."
CAN A DRIVER HUSTLE THE CAR AROUND THE TRACK HERE? "Yes. It is a
driver-hustle race track."

YOU TALKED EARLY ABOUT CATCHING THE 48. AT
TIMES, DOES THAT SEEM INSURMOUNTABLE BECAUSE OF WHAT THAT TEAM HAS
ACCOMPLISHED OVER THE LAST FOUR YEARS? "At times it does. At times it's
frustrating. At times you feel like you're gaining on them, at times you
feel, like at Kansas, for instance, we were a fair amount better than the
48 at Kansas, and it was something new we were trying, something in our
development plan. So, we were super-excited, we were celebrating like we
just won the Daytona 500, won 10 races in a row, even though we finished
third, handed it to Tony Stewart, we felt like at that point, man, we've
really made a year-and-a-half's worth of gain here in one race. And then
we went to the next week and it was like we didn't know what we were
doing. Speaking as far as our car or our team goes, that was a little
frustrating, how we were on a high and then we were on a low. We went to
California, which we thought would be similar to what worked there would
work there and it clearly didn't."

IS IT PARTICULARLY FRUSTRATING WHEN
SOMETHING LIKE TALLADEGA HAPPENS, WHEN THE 48 WAS IN THE BACK ALL DAY AND
THEN FINISHED NEAR THE FRONT? "No, not really, because that's kind of
philosophy with restrictor-plate racing and [Greg] Erwin talked about
running up front for the day and running up front for these
restrictor-plate races, felt like it was just a better spot. I normally
do what Jimmie did, kind of try to stay a little bit out of the trouble
until toward the end. But we qualified decent so I ran up front until we
got a pit-road penalty and it put me in the back. So I was back there
with the 48 until all of that took place, and I took fourth and he got
sixth. You know, that's just restrictor-plate racing has kind of
developed that, and that's all about luck and missing the wreck and
being in the right place in the right time. I've gotten wrecked doing
that. I was doing that at the Daytona 500 and it rained out and I
finished 20th. Anything in the world can happen to you when you're in
that position. It's the way it is. You have to look back and say, How
was the wreck caused? Was it a normal racing accident? What caused that
wreck that took that whole field out?

"Think about it, if that wreck wouldn't have
happened, Mark Martin would've finished in the top 10 and Jimmie Johnson
would've finished, probably, 15th. So, you can't always call it racing
luck or did you do the right thing or whatever. How was the wreck caused
is one thing I would look at. Was it a normal incident? Did a guy get a
flat tire? Those things play a factor in this whole deal, too. That whole
outcome from the steering wheel in one guy's car."

YOU'RE NO LONGER IN
CONTENTION. IS ANY PART OF YOU ROOTING FOR MARK MARTIN TO WIN THE
CHAMPIONSHIP? "Yeah, I've been rooting for Mark Martin ever since it
started, right after myself. So, I'm still rooting for Mark and I'm
still rooting for myself to get fifth in points, or fourth. I think just
out of the guys in the Chase, and how hard he's worked and what he's
done for our sport, I wouldn't say anybody deserves it, but he certainly
is just eligible as everybody else out of the whole mix."

WHAT'S LEFT
TO DO THIS YEAR? WINS? POINTS? GETTING READY FOR NEXT YEAR? DO YOU CARE
WHERE YOU END UP IN POINTS? "Yeah. It pays a lot of money for the final
point standings for our sport, and your name is etched in that book for a
long time. So getting the highest finish we can in the points is
important. And maybe being right where I'm at, maybe I'd have a
different opinion if I was 12th or 11th or 10th -- what's the difference
between 10th and 11th? But we really have an opportunity to be fifth, I
think, or at least sixth, it depends what happens. To finish fifth in
points would be really big for me, I think. That would be big for our
team. So, you're always trying to get the most points you can and try
and get your car going for next year, and you're sort of all doing it
together."

ARE YOU TRYING NEW THINGS? "Yeah, we're trying some stuff.
First run of the day we went out and ran 10th on the sheets, came in, put
some goofy stuff in there, it didn't drive very good, made an adjustment
on it, still didn't like it, immediately came back and started working
on a few other race things, and went right into qualifying trim. So
that's about all we had."